I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today • Hacker News Board

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#291

Post by rectaway » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 6:53 PM UTC

pault wrote: post #267

skinnymuch wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How quickly do they answer that to get that so wrong? I freeze like crazy with interview questions. Even you just putting the question there, my brain froze and I couldn’t remember the word “action” for a couple of seconds.

They usually answer confidently right away. It's one thing if you're nervous in interviews, it's another if someone asks you a novice-level question about your area of expertise and you give an answer that is objectively wrong.

Judging by your posts in this thread, have you considered the problem might be that you (and many other companies) hire people based on their ability to answer theoretical questions (which also happens to be while under a lot of pressure), rather than their ability to code? I'd like to think there are plenty of candidates that have open source projects that showcase their coding skills, or that have made impressive side-projects.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#292

Post by oldandtired » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 6:54 PM UTC

HorizonXP wrote: post #215

pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

Would a better interview test be to ask the candidate to review code rather than write it themselves? That is, give them a code sample, describe what it aims to do, and ask: 1) Does this code accomplish the goal? 2) How would you improve this code to make it more readable? More efficient? Personally, I think I'd rather work with people that know how to review code and provide feedback/commentary, since that usually m…

Many years ago, I was given a piece of code and asked to explain what the code did. I got the job because I starting asking questions about what the code was expected to do and what sort of evnironment the code was running in. Even though it was only three or four lines, without first understanding the contextual questions, the code itself could have been doing a variety of tasks. Since I did become the maintainer of the code base, it did turn out that there were quite a few non-obvious effects occuring in that piece of code.

There are plenty of programmers who would have jumped right in and explained what the code was doing (surface appearance) and missed the simple fact that there was nowhere enough information present to actually know what that code was actually doing.

So even with you two questions, which are a start, getting them to indicate they understand the context/environmental problems can be a more challenging process.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#293

Post by zerr » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

pault wrote: post #205

caymanjim wrote: post #85

Interviewing people is hard. Most people suck at it. I've interviewed over 100 people in my life, and I've been interviewed about ten times. I know I still suck at it. The code test is one of the more annoying facets of interviews. On the hiring side, it's an efficient way to screen and vet candidates for basic skills. It's relatively low cost to the employer to have a recruiter issue the test. If you come up with yo…

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

> I typically focus on reviewing code with bugs and refactoring bad code instead of forcing them to whiteboard

This is a completely different (and actually relevant) thing compared to leetcode/hackerrank riddles.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#294

Post by lmkg » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #264

dcolkitt wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My interviews at the latter place eventually devolved into basic IQ tests... The problem is that this doesn't scale with talent and/or experience. Industrial psychology has consistently found that IQ is a better predictor of job performance than experience. The reason being is that intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire knowledge and skills. Intelligent people literally learn faster than others. The skil…

> Industrial psychology has consistently found that IQ is a better predictor of job performance than experience. If hiring managers are aware of this, then it might be a good idea to apply to Mensa. If you're able to get in, maybe putting "Mensa" down on your resume isn't that bad of a thing. (I've always felt it would make one come off as a douche, but maybe that's not so true.)

Hiring managers should also be aware that in the United States, Supreme Court precedent makes the use of general intelligence tests for hiring legally fraught because they can produce racially-biased outcomes.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#295

Post by varjag » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #282

varjag wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great point we hear often, so I incorporated it into our last round of hiring. Some still couldn't do it with an IDE, their language of choice and access to Google. (sorting an array, with any algorithm you want)

Would using a built in library be acceptable? Actually in C knowing how to use qsort() does require having a little knowledge of how function pointers work. If they did, I would ask them what could be some drawbacks of using the built in qsort function (function call overhead). On the other hand, would you accept a bubble sort as a solution? Or the most degenerate case- a bogosort ;) ?

Bubble sort, bogosort, sleepsort, anything that solves the assignment (gets an array sorted) of course. And no, a library call would not count towards implementation, but it's not too much to ask from candidates with masters degrees.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#296

Post by holtalanm » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #284

kamarg wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from the Midwest I can assure you that we don't have a larger percentage of crappy coders than the coasts and tech hubs do. We spend just as much time fixing the code from your terrible developers as you do from ours. It's really a lack of training provided by companies and that most 4 year degrees don't actually prepare people to write good maintainable code so new developers have to luck into finding a m…

I didn't mean it to be insulting or to imply that there are not talented people in the Midwest. What I mean is that if you look to places like Louisville, KY for just one example, or Dayton, OH and look at the type of pay that is being offered there, it is vastly below the coasts. Even adjusted for cost of living and other expenses, many cities across the midwest pay below what is a reasonable market value, and natur…

i'm not sure why location has anything to do with code quality. imo, it doesn't.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#297

Post by zerr » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:04 PM UTC

kache_ wrote: post #126

The reason that people still ask algorithmic questions is because they work for avoiding false positives. False positives are a lot more damaging to a company compared to false negatives. While algorithmic questions can get many false negatives, they don't get much false positives. What does it mean for a software developer? Spend a few hours a week doing leetcode questions. They're really not that hard.

> Spend a few hours a week doing leetcode questions

There is no persistent storage in humans - people forget things, and it is quite annoying to do this again and again for every new job.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#298

Post by oldandtired » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

aianus wrote: post #287

pault wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crux of the problem is that we've interviewed dozens of applicants and none of them have been able to pass the sniff test. We are setting the bar pretty low, but the average skill level of the people we've had access to is shocking. There just isn't a supply of good developers for companies that aren't FAANGs or unicorns. And before anyone says we aren't paying enough, or we are being unfair, the reason these int…

Could you not hire someone smart who doesn't already know react/redux and teach it to them? Or give them a couple of weeks to do some tutorials? I knew almost zero about web dev (I had been a decent C++/Java/Scala backend programmer) when I was hired to work in a web dev role -- I spent the first two weeks doing RoR tutorials on the internet and was just as productive as anyone else a couple of months after that.

This is usually not a consideration and has not really been there for decades. What many forget is that people who are speciallists in the area thay are recruiting for are not necessarily the best candidates for the actually position.

Sometimes (many times) if you can get someone who is more of a generalist and is capable of diving in to gain the necessary skills is far more valuable. They are quite often the first to be discarded from the interview process.

Many of the psoitions I have participated in required handling new tasks that were not within the broad scope of what the position was expected to handle. Yet, having the attitude of "let us see what is needed", meant that I was bale to be functionally more effective in that position, including being the "go to" person for those who needed problems to be solved that their normal IT groups would not handle.

I have found too many "code guru's" to not be capable of thinking outside of the box whaen it is necessary. You don't have to be a "brilliant coder" but more of a person who can develop an understanding of the "problem space" of those having the problems that require solutions.

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#299

Post by naveen99 » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

pault wrote: post #205

caymanjim wrote: post #85

Interviewing people is hard. Most people suck at it. I've interviewed over 100 people in my life, and I've been interviewed about ten times. I know I still suck at it. The code test is one of the more annoying facets of interviews. On the hiring side, it's an efficient way to screen and vet candidates for basic skills. It's relatively low cost to the employer to have a recruiter issue the test. If you come up with yo…

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

For loop syntax is unnecessarily complex when you first encounter it. A simple if then control flow is much easier to understand and is how it’s done in assembly anyway. Unfortunately he used both. Maybe an opportunity to teach him about goto and labels...

Re: I got asked LeetCode questions for a dev-ops systems engineering job today

#300

Post by kevstev » Fri, Jun 14, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #285

pault wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My resume speaks for itself. At the time of this writing, I am working with someone who has 10+ years of experience, including former positions as a lead developer. I was involved in the interview process and made the recommendation to hire, as they were able to answer a lot of domain-specific questions very well and had a good knowledge of the ecosystem. Fast-forward three months, and I am spending hours per day s…

Entrepreneurial engineer here... If I ever hire an engineer for my business -- I hope it'd be someone I've already worked with and know -- but if it had to be someone random, I'd pursue this method: 1) Solicit Resumes 2) Pick N candidates 3) Phone screen to make sure they aren't complete assholes 4) Stack rank & pop top candidate 5) Pay them to develop a feature on contract 6) If satisfied, repeat step 5 until ready…

This seems good on the surface, but I can't imagine top tier talent at a FANG or equivalent ever leaving their job to do this.

I feel this filter will only leave behind those who are currently contractors that are interested in maybe going full time, and the unemployed/employed who are desperate enough to go along with such a scheme. Foregoing the typical crappy interview process is one thing, but working, even for money, without any certainty as the end outcome would certainly turn me off.

To be honest, this setup seems like something that would be hatched by a scummy company to constantly string you along with a carrot that will never come. I am not implying that you are that type, but there are enough horror stories out there that I would avoid ever getting myself put into that position.